Merciful — Meaning, Definition & Synonyms

Merciful (adjective) — Senses, Synonyms & Antonyms

1. showing kindness and forgiveness instead of harshness or cruelty especially to someone under one's authority or control

   "When our English teacher caught us cheating, we prayed he would be merciful in deciding our punishment."

   similar: clement, forbearing, forgiving, lenient, soft, patient, pitying, tolerant, understanding, beneficent, benevolent, benignant, compassionate, good-hearted, humane, kind, kindhearted, kindly, softhearted, sympathetic, tender, tenderhearted, warmhearted, attentive, considerate, solicitous, thoughtful, affable, amicable, benign, companionable, comradely, cordial, friendly, genial, gentle, good, good-natured, good-tempered, gracious, mild, neighborly, nice, pleasant, sweet, warm, altruistic, brotherly, charitable, freehanded, generous, greathearted, humanitarian, liberal, magnanimous, munificent, noble, openhearted, philanthropic, selfless, unselfish, unsparing, anticruelty, cruelty-free
   opposite: grim, hard-boiled, harsh, heavy-handed, severe, stern, tough, unsentimental, ironhearted, merciless, pitiless, ruthless, stonyhearted, inconsiderate, insensitive, thoughtless, uncaring, unthinking, hateful, malevolent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, nasty, spiteful, virulent, antihumanitarian, uncharitable, atrocious, barbaric, barbarous, bestial, brutal, brute, brutish, callous, cold-blooded, cruel, fiendish, hard-hearted, heartless, inhuman, inhumane, insensate, sadistic, savage, truculent, uncompassionate, unfeeling, unkind, unkindly, unsympathetic, vicious, wanton